Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, son of a Scottish veterinary surgeon, Donald Campbell, and his wife Elizabeth.[2] Campbell's parents had moved to Keighley when his father became a partner in a local veterinary practice.[3] Donald was a Gaelic-speaker from the island of Tiree; his wife was from Ayrshire.[4] Campbell has two elder brothers, Donald and Graeme, and a younger sister, Elizabeth. Alastair would go over the county border to Lancashire to watch Burnley F.C. with his father.[5]

Campbell became interested in journalism. His first published work was Inter-City Ditties, his winning entry to a readers' competition in Penthouse Forum, the journalistic counterpart to the Penthouse pornographic magazine. This led to a lengthy stint writing pieces for the magazine with such titles as "Busking with Bagpipes" and "The Riviera Gigolo", written in a style calculated to lead readers at the time to believe they were descriptions of his own sexual exploits.[6]

In 1982 Campbell moved to the London office of the Daily Mirror, Fleet Street's sole remaining big-circulation supporter of the Labour Party. He became a political correspondent before in 1986 moving to Today, a full-colour tabloid newspaper which was at the time trying to turn leftward, where he worked as a news editor, and was quickly awarded the epithet Scunner[8] by his new colleagues, an allusion to the Scunner Campbell in the contemporary children's TV series Super Gran. His rapid rise and its accompanying stress led to alcohol abuse.[9]

Campbell was admitted to hospital in 1986 when he travelled to Scotland to cover Neil Kinnock's visit to Glasgow. He was detained by the police for his own safety after being observed behaving oddly. Police contacted his partner and following her calls to friends in Scotland the police let a family friend take Campbell to Ross Hall Hospital, a private BMI hospital in Glasgow where she and her father visited him. Over the next five days as an in-patient he was given medication to calm him, and he realised that he had an alcohol problem after seeing a psychiatrist. Campbell said that from that day onwards he counted each day that he did not drink alcohol, and did not stop counting until he had reached thousands.[9]

Campbell returned to England, preferring to stay with friends near Cheltenham, rather than return to London (and his partner) where he did not feel safe. His condition continued with a phase of depression, and he was reluctant to seek further medical help. He eventually cooperated with treatment from his family doctor.[9]

He has been a prominent supporter and advocate for the mental health anti-stigma campaign, Time to Change.[10][11]

Campbell's first son was born in 1987. He returned to the Daily Mirror, where he had to restart at a low grade and work night shifts, but he rebuilt his career and became political editor.[9]

He was a close adviser of Neil Kinnock, going on holiday with the Kinnocks, and worked closely with Robert Maxwell. Shortly after Maxwell drowned in November 1991, Campbell punched The Guardian journalist Michael White after White joked about "Captain Bob, Bob, Bob...bobbing" in the Atlantic Ocean from where the tycoon's body had been recovered.[12] Campbell later put this down to stress over uncertainty as to whether he and his colleagues would lose their jobs.[13][14]

After leaving the Mirror in 1993, Campbell became political editor of Today. He was working there when Labour leader John Smith died in 1994. He was a well-known face and helped to interview the three candidates for the new Labour Party leader; it later became known he had already formed links with Tony Blair.

Campbell lecturing at the LSE series 'From Kennedy to Blair,' 7 July 2003

Shortly after Blair won the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994, Campbell left Today to become his spokesman. Having recovered and become teetotal, he told Blair about his alcoholism, which Blair did not see as a problem.[15] He played an important role in the run-up to the 1997 general election, working with Peter Mandelson to co-ordinate Labour's campaign. He also worked hard to win support from the national media for the Labour Party, particularly from the newspapers that for many years had been anti-Labour. By March 1997, many of the leading newspapers – including the Sun, once a staunch Thatcherite paper – had declared their support for Labour.[16]

He moved into government when Labour won the general election in May 1997 and was the Prime Minister's chief press secretary until 2000. He then moved to the post of Prime Minister's Director of Communications which gave him a strategic role in overseeing government communications. He was sponsored by the US President George W. Bush to complete the London marathon in aid of a cancer charity, Leukaemia Research.

In the run-up to the Iraq War Campbell was involved in the preparation and release of the "September Dossier" in September 2002 and the "Iraq Dossier" (or "Dodgy Dossier") in February 2003. These documents argued the case for concern over possible weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. Both have been criticised as overstating or distorting the actual intelligence findings. Subsequent investigation revealed that the September Dossier had been altered, on Campbell's orders, to be consistent with a speech given by George W. Bush and statements by other United States officials. On 9 September 2002, Campbell sent a memo to John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, in which Campbell directed that the British dossier be "one that complements rather than conflicts with" the US claims.[17]

Later in 2003, commenting on WMDs in Iraq he said, "Come on, you don't seriously think we won't find anything?".[18] He resigned in August 2003 during the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly. Kelly's view that the government exaggerated the Iraqi threat in the Iraq Dossier, told to BBC journalists Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts, had led to Campbell battling with the BBC. When Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon revealed to Campbell that Dr Kelly had talked to the BBC, Campbell had then decided, in his own words, to use this fact to "fuck Gilligan".[19] The counsel for the Kelly family said to Lord Hutton: 'The family invite the inquiry to find that the government made a deliberate decision to use Dr Kelly as a pawn as part of its strategy in its battle with the BBC.'[20] He claimed in June 2013 that Tony Blair had "greater commitment to wartime truth" than Winston Churchill.[21]

Throughout his time in Downing Street, Campbell kept a diary which reportedly totalled some two million words. Selected extracts, titled The Blair Years, were published on 9 July 2007. Subsequent press coverage of the book's release included coverage of what Campbell had chosen to leave out, particularly in respect of the relationship between Blair and his Chancellor and successor, Gordon Brown. Campbell expressed an intention to one day publish the diaries in fuller form, and indicated in the introduction to the book that he did not wish to make matters harder for Brown in his new role as prime minister, or to damage the Labour Party.

Campbell has his own website and blog, as well as several pages on social networking websites.[23] He uses these platforms to discuss British politics and other topics close to his heart. So far, Campbell's commentaries and views have garnered media attention and generated interest among various online communities. In October 2008, he broadcast the personal story of his mental illness in a television documentary partly to reduce the stigma of that illness.[9] He has written a novel on the subject entitled All in the Mind.

Campbell appeared as a mentor in the BBC Two series The Speaker in April 2009 offering his advice on persuasive speaking.[24]

He is a lifelong supporter of Burnley Football Club and writes about their exploits in a column called "Turf Moor Diaries" for the FanHouse UK football blog .[25] He is regularly involved in events with the club.[26]

Campbell made his first appearance on the BBC One political discussion programme Question Time on 27 May 2010. At the opening of the edition, presenter David Dimbleby said that the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition would not allow a front bench member of the government to appear on the show unless Campbell was dropped. The BBC refused to do this. The government later accused the BBC of behaving improperly for allowing Campbell to appear as a more in-depth version of his diaries was due to be published the following week, and a Downing Street spokesman told The Guardian, "Campbell seemed to be on because he's flogging a book next week, so the BBC haven't behaved entirely properly here."[27] Campbell said that he had waited until Labour were in opposition before appearing on the show and that the date was a coincidence as it was the only time he was free. He suggested the discord was part of a Conservative anti-BBC agenda.[27] The minister who had been scheduled to appear was the then Chief Secretary to the TreasuryDavid Laws who Campbell produced a picture of during the programme. Three days later Laws resigned his post following revelations about possible irregularities in his expenses claims in The Telegraph the day before.

Campbell appeared on BBC's Top Gear in July 2010 where he was booed by the audience but set a time of 1:47 around the Top Gear test track in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car segment. He was second-fastest at that time.[28]

In June 2012 he was guest presenter of Have I Got News For You where he surprised the audience by playing the bagpipes. The episode was also featured feuding between Campbell and the show's regular participant Ian Hislop.[30]

Campbell presented and narrated the 20 February 2012 edition of BBC current affairs programme Panorama, which was entitled "Britain's Hidden Alcoholics". Campbell stated that he is an alcoholic, although he has not drunk alcohol since 1986.

In 2012, Campbell made his first appearance in an acting role with a small part in an episode of the BBC drama Accused.[32]

In an interview with Chat Politics, Campbell declared his regret at not standing in the 1997 general election, and admitted he finds it "depressing" that younger people with far more experience of YouTube and Twitter were not ready to carry out his former role.[38]

It is also widely believed that the character of Malcolm Tucker from the BBC political satire comedy The Thick of It is loosely based on Campbell. Tucker is famous for his short fuse and use of very strong language. In an interview with Mark Kermode on BBC2's The Culture Show, Campbell denied that the two are similar in any relevant way, but admitted to his liberal use of profanities in the workplace.[40]